She would have said more; she would perhaps have persuaded me from my heroics, had not the guns begun firing. That broke the spell with a vengeance; nothing could be done after that. I shook up my horse, hardly pausing to say “God bless you.” In another minute she was out of sight, while I was cantering off to the extreme right wing with the Duke's orders to his officers to cut in on the road to Chard. As I rode along, behind the scattered line of our men, I could see the rolls of smoke from the firing on the left. The men on the right were not firing, but being raw troops they were edging little by little towards the firing, in which I do not doubt they longed to be, for the sake of the noise. They say now that the Duke threw away this battle at Axminster. He could have cut Albemarle's troops to pieces had he chosen to do so. They made a pretty bold front till we were within gunfire of them, when they all scattered off to the town pell-mell. While they were in the town, we could have cut them off from the Chard road, which would have penned them in while we worked round to seize the bridges. After that, one brisk assault would have made the whole batch of them surrender. Some of our officers galloped from our right wing (where I was) to see how the land lay, before leading off their men as I had brought them word. A few of them fired their pistols, when they came to the road, which was enough to make the right wing double forward to support them without orders. In a minute about a thousand of us were running fast after our officers, while the Duke's aides charged down to stop us. He had decided not to fight, probably thinking that it would do his cause no good by killing a lot of his subjects so early in his reign. We know now that had he made one bold attack that morning, the whole of Albemarle's force, with the exception of a few officers, would have declared for him. In other words we should have added to our army about a thousand drilled armed men who knew the country through which we were to pass. By not fighting, we discouraged our own army, who grumbled bitterly when they found their second battle as ineffectual as the fight at Bridport.